She becomes the words and respects the melody to the note. Richard Rodgers, Jerome kern, Jimmy Van Heusen, and many of the iconic composers who created these melodies would be proud. She is, note for note, a faithful messenger of the great stuff.

Maggart's real name is amber, but she chose Maude for the alliteration and because it's name evokes the era in which many of the songs she sings were written. At 32, she still looks like a girl. But the woman emerges on stage when sings and, to a degree, when she speaks. For Maude Maggart, the songs are life itself, the reason for being alive, for falling in love, for risking everything for a man who has touched her heart.

Believe me, she has done her homework. She has learned by research and discipline and by channeling the wisdom of her guides, singers Andrea Marcovicci and Michael Feinstein.

Maggart has recorded four wonderful albums, but she is someone you must see perform in person. Her physical beauty, her brave presence, looking so vulnerable in front of the audience, is not captured on Cds. Her ethereal and frequently agonizing bravado can be received by some as irritating on a disk, but for me the beauty of her singing overcomes the difficulties.

The songs she chooses are crafted with intelligence and talent. No faults rhymes, like home and alone. Instead: "You are the promise kiss of spring time, that makes the lonely winter seem long/you are the breathless hush of evening, that trembles on the brink of lovely song." That, by Oscar Hammerstein for a medley by Jerome Kern,

1 2 3